U.S. Climate Envoy Seems to Shift Stance on Timetable for New Talks

DURBAN, South Africa — Facing sharp criticism from fellow envoys, environmental activists and one impassioned heckler, the chief American negotiator at a climate conference here on Thursday shifted his position — or at least his language — on a timetable for a new set of international talks.

Todd D. Stern, the Obama administration’s special envoy for climate change, was put on the defensive by a narrative developing here that the United States opposed any further action to address global climate disruption until after 2020, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a primary United Nations climate agreement, and voluntary programs negotiated more recently will have run their course.

He firmly denied that the United States was dragging its feet and, somewhat ambiguously, endorsed a proposal from the European Union to quickly start negotiating a new international climate change treaty.

Mr. Stern’s statement to delegates from more than 190 nations at the annual climate conference was disrupted by a 21-year-old Middlebury College junior, Abigail Borah, who told the assembly that she would speak for the United States because Mr. Stern had forfeited the right to do so.

“I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot,” said Ms. Borah, who is attending the conference as a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement. “The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty.”

Scores of delegates and observers gave her a sustained ovation. Then the South African authorities threw her out of the conference. “That’s O.K.,” Ms. Borak, who is from Princeton, N.J., said later by telephone. “I think I got my point across.”

Mr. Stern smiled as if the applause were for him and continued with his prepared remarks. Afterward, at a briefing for reporters, he dismissed charges that the United States was blocking any action on climate change until after 2020.

“It is completely off base to suggest that the U.S. is proposing that we delay action until 2020,” Mr. Stern said. He detailed a number of domestic and international actions that the United States had taken and said that he and other administration officials were working on others, like finding ways to raise tens of billions of dollars to help poor nations adapt to a warming planet.

Photo

Todd D. Stern, the chief American climate negotiator, spoke on Thursday in Durban, South Africa, at a climate conference.Credit
Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Taking all of those things together, it’s nonsense to suggest that what we are doing is proposing a kind of hiatus in dealing with climate change until after 2020,” Mr. Stern said. “So, I just wanted to make that clear because, after I heard it about the fourth or fifth time in the last few days, and again I’ve heard this from everywhere, from ministers to press reports to the very sincere and passionate young woman who was in the hall when I was giving my remarks. I just wanted to be on the record as saying that, that’s just a mistake. It is not true.”

He then seemed to endorse a European Union proposal to adopt a “road map” for future discussions leading to a formal climate change treaty to be completed by 2015 and to take effect in 2020. He had previously given lukewarm support to the plan, saying only that the United States was open to a “process” for a future agreement.

His language was somewhat convoluted, but he said that the European Union had called for a road map “that the U.S. supports.”

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“We are strongly committed to promptly starting a process to move forward on that,” Mr. Stern said, although he immediately qualified that statement by saying that any resulting agreement may or may not be legally binding.

The Europeans and a large majority of smaller nations are adamant that any future accord be legally binding, while China, India, the United States and several other major emitters of greenhouse gases have attached some difficult conditions to participation in any mandatory agreement.

A number of issues are nearing resolution, although others — including the status of the Kyoto Protocol as well as the form and timing of future negotiations — remain up in the air.

A version of this article appears in print on December 9, 2011, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Climate Envoy Seems to Shift Stance on Timetable for New Talks. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe